QRT Case Study: Bright Horizons

Q’Straint Retractors Provide Florida Students a Safe Ride to School and Vocational Skills Development When they Arrive

Every day, some 60 wheelchair-dependent, special needs students arrive at the Bright Horizons School in Pompano Beach, Florida, their trip made safe by the use of Q’Straint wheelchair restraints. Then, as part of their vocational training program at the Broward County “center school,” many of the students participate in the manufacture of Q’Straint restraints, performing pre-assembly of bolts, washers and butterfly fasteners. For over a year, the students have been completing approximately 3,000 assemblies a month, packaging them in boxes of 100 and labeling the boxes for correct inventory and retrieval at Q’Straint’s manufacturing facility in Fort Lauderdale.

“Our kids are helping assemble and package a product that actually supports them in life,” says Stacy Wolfe, Bright Horizons’ Vocational Coordinator. “They are capable of working, they feel really good about working and they feel really good about working on materials that they actually see going back out.”

Bright Horizons is a participant in Broward County’s Post-Graduate Alternatives for Secondary Students (PASS) program, a partnership between employers — including Q’Straint — and Broward County Public Schools. PASS brings authentic work into its vocational lab, where young adults learn employable skills that enable them to reach their highest potential.

As Wolfe explains, Bright Horizons graduates transition into adult day training programs where they will be working on similar assembly jobs. “After visiting several of these ADT programs, I knew Q’Straint would be the perfect job to help our students acquire a skill that they will need for their future placement,” she says.

“Our students are so familiar with that job now, they have 100-percent mastery. So when they transition into one of the adult day programs, I can say to its director, ‘This student who is graduating and coming to your program can work on the Q’Straint job, independently’ which puts them in position to go right to work because they already have the necessary skills. And that’s when they start to get paid.”

Besides providing the opportunity to acquire useful skills at school, Q’Straint plays an important role in helping the students to get to school in the first place.

“Close to 60 students in my school are non-ambulatory and use wheelchairs,” says Wolfe. “All of our school buses have wheelchair lifts, and use Q’Straint products to secure the chairs in the bus. The buses and those hookups are vital to us.”

Q’Straint’s easy attachment and self-adjusting auto-retractors reduce securement time for drivers and aides, and help keep buses on schedule. The system’s proven reliability helps the Bright Horizons program remain accessible to students who need it so much. “We rarely have issues with securements,” says Wolfe. “If those systems are broken, that means there’s one less individual that can get on the bus that day, which is really challenging, because so many of our students live in group homes or they live with families who do not have wheelchair-accessible vehicles.”

“All of our school buses have wheelchair lifts, and use Q’Straint products to secure the chairs in the bus. The buses and those hookups are vital to us.”